An app that detects potholes

Working with Boston’s Public Works Department and the Mayor’s Office of New Urban Mechanics, we were able to generate positive media placement for an amazing new mobile phone app that automatically detects potholes in the roadway and reports the location back to the city. The app is called Street Bump.

Street Bump was a public-private partnership. It demonstrated government’s willingness to embrace new media and technology. Moreover, it was a good idea, and that is the foundation for a positive media campaign.

Automotive

When I launched BlastCars.com, I wanted to show that it wasn’t just another auto news site. It was going to be something created by Generation Y, FOR Generation Y. We aren’t expects — we can’t rebuild a transmission. But we like cars. We want to do more with cars.

We didn’t grow up fixing cars. Our dads did. We never had to — or were even marginally expected to — change our own oil. Headlights got replaced at the shop. For $20, you can get a wash and vac. Then, after a few years, you go and lease a new car anyway.

So I spent about $500 and bought a 1987 Dodge Ram.

We’re fixing it up, teaming with PR agencies and automotive companies, and putting this baby back together. It’s a slow process, but it gives the website direction — we are learning with you, not talking down to you. We clean it, drive it, and sometimes I want to hit it with a hammer, but it’s fun. And it’s taught me a lot about the automotive industry.

As a publicist, this knowledge has helped position JGPR to service clients in the car sales, car parts, tuning/customizing, and auto repair fields.

We also have experts we can draw from to produce content, blogs, Tweets, and feature stories for your shop! But it all starts with this knowledge, and experience actually turning a wrench that sets us apart from other publicists.

Aviation and Aerospace

I consider myself a James May nerd. I am fascinated by flight control surfaces and the size of the universe and the habitable zones of solar systems.

Not an astrophysicist. I’m just fascinated by it all. But if you’re a tech company, don’t you think it would help to have a publicist who knows the difference between ailerons and elevators? Or who can build a computer and knows the ins and outs of Linux?

I have an acute interest in air and space topics. My first website was a Geocities page, little more than a series of photo galleries and factsheets about jet fighters, when I was 13. I actually re-launched the site in 2012 as a hobby.

So, whether you have a private jet company, or want some publicity for your radio telescope or research project, I don’t have a PhD, but I love the topics.